


Grains of Sand

by furchte_die_schildkrote



Category: Chaos Walking - Patrick Ness
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 15:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furchte_die_schildkrote/pseuds/furchte_die_schildkrote
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and ficlets about Mistress Nicola Coyle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The sea destroys you and wears you down, and you are left both to embrace your smallness in the face of such raw power and to fight for a scrap of meaning.

The waves beat against land. In some places, they slammed against rocks and cliffs with a thunderous roar, sending up seaspray as tall as two full-grown men, churning the sea to the point that it appeared to be undergoing a confused and chaotic boil in all directions. In others, the waves were tiny, barely strong enough to shift a few pebbles, but beneath this calm, a sense of truth was hidden. These places were not simply patches of land where the sea had decided to be merciful. They were where the sea’s battle had been waged and won—thousands, maybe even millions of years earlier. And that’s all there really was. For the land, it was a lifetime of enduring the pounding power until it was inevitably worn down, crushed, collapsed—beaten into nothingness. For the sea, it was an eternity of crashing and pounding and tearing away, even after the battle was over and won.

The day Nicola Coyle first stood in front of the ocean, it changed her. There had been so much she was not prepared for—the isolation, the impossible living conditions in face of a lack of technology, the awful and inescapable Noise, being separated from Saoirse Thrace—but she was unprepared for the sea most of all. She had seen vids of it, studied its mineral composition, learned how it affected the soil in the surrounding area, and memorized its approximate size (2.9 x 10^8 sq km). None of this had prepared her for what the ocean truly was, for standing in front of hundreds of thousands of kilometres of deadly, indifferent power. Constantly shifting expanses of water spread out so far that not a hint of land could be seen at the horizon. Something this enormous should be frozen in place, stuck under its own mass, but the ocean was in a state of constant change, combined with an air of something ancient and immoveable.

Everyday, Nicola Coyle saw the sea, heard its waves breaking, smelled the salt infusing the air, felt the sea breeze cut through town. Everyday, it drew out some different combination of emotion, usually varied degrees of awe, anxious calm, and fear. All she could see was only an infinitessimally small fragment of this world’s ocean. Some people felt this sort of humility from seeing the expanse of space, but not Nicola Coyle. Space was horrifyingly vast and empty, but in a way that almost reaffirmed your existence. It couldn’t touch you. It was literally nothing—a nothing that could easily destroy you, but nonetheless, nothing. The sea was different. It threatened to crush you and drown you and stare you down until you were nothing.

In fact, how could you even argue that she wasn’t already nothing? Standing before so much raw power, she realized how small she was. She might as well be a grain of sand, destined to be tossed about and eventually worn down and eaten up by the ocean.

The ocean gave her impetus. It gave her despair. It left her caught between being reduced to a grain of sand and fighting to make a mark, to do more than simply be dissolved by the ocean’s waves, pulled apart into meaninglessness.


	2. This is the way she died

Mistress Coyle’s final act took 5 seconds.

5, 4,  
“But there are still those of us who care too much for this world to let that happen,” she said, carefully holding a measuredly rapid pace. The crowd gasped and then fell silent as she pulled her coat open—easily snapping off the buttons, whose threads she had loosened the night before. She garnered a small sense of pride from not fumbling over the buttons, and for holding a steady composure as she spoke. She would be remembered as stoic.

3,  
“For a New World. FOR A BETTER FUTURE!” she said. There should be fear in her stomach, a hollow sense of dread and doom threatening to crush her, she thought to herself. But there wasn’t. This was victory, she thought, watching as the crowd began to panic and push and shove and flee. She reached for the button, almost expecting time to slow as she reached approached her end.

2,  
It didn’t.

1,

She pushed the detonator. In an instant, she ended, with blinding light searing through her sight, the vicious flames shredding through her body, and the explosive roar ripping through her mind until she was nothing. It was an excruciating instant, but it was her due, and what a small price a second’s pain was in exchange for this. She will become a hero, a martyr, a savior, seared into history.


	3. WANTED: Mistress Coyle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this image: http://gilldoesbookstuff.tumblr.com/post/54509932681/chaos-walking-2-2-propaganda-posters-wanted

Barely a day after announcing The Answer’s revived presence to Haven, one of the scouts told Mistress Coyle about the wanted posters on every street light, wood fence, and storefront. Mistress Coyle chuckled.

"Good, they’re scared. If David Prentiss wants us gone, it means we must be doing something right," she said, showing no sign of the shadow this placed in her mind. She had no illusions of the purpose of the Office of the Ask, nor of how harshly Prentiss would response as New World drifted once more towards wartime. Later, she and her generals would discuss the implications of The Answer on the women of Haven, but for now, it was best to celebrate.

There was a high in camp. More and more refugees were arriving every hour, only vaguely aware of the witch hunt from which they very narrowly escaped. Relief and a frenzied, furious joy ran through the camp, sweeping rocks and debris out of the clearing, pushing the frames of tents and buildings into place, and twisting the wires and chemicals and shards of metal together into an explosive artillery. Tonight, they celebrated the simple victory of existing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mistress Coyle rallies members of the Answer during the first Spackle War. Inspired by this image: http://chaoswalks.tumblr.com/post/32236340607

"The Answer is not a thing you do if you want respect. If you’re a soldier in the army, you get called ‘brave’ and ‘selfless’ and ‘a hero’. If you’re soldier in The Answer, you get called ‘a Girl Scout with a chemistry set’. At least, that’s what they’ll say to your face. The words in their Noise are far more vile and hateful than anything they would dare say to a woman who knows her way around a bomb.

But however much they mock us, however much they try to force us down so they can stand on our shoulders and take all of the glory for themselves, they still fear us. They can’t hear our minds, and so they tell us that we don’t think anything worth hearing. They can’t control us, and so they tell us we are weak. They can’t stop us, and so they tell us that we could never do anything important enough to merit stopping. They fill our heads with these words not because they are true, but because they are afraid of what we would do if we knew the truth. They pray that we will accept their lies, that we will never truly realize the power we are capable of.

So, sisters, while it is true that joining the Answer will bring you all forms of hateful, condescending, derisive words, these words are only a mask meant to hide the emotion we truly evoke: fear. The men in our communities seek to crush us will lies, and we have risen above that. That makes us mighty.

That makes us powerful. If we were men, our actions would make us respected and gloried, but as women, they make us feared. Not because we are incompetent, weak, or not in our ‘rightful place’. It is because we are mighty, and the men hate us for having realized this.

Be proud, sisters, and never submit.”

—————————————-

_This is a transcript of a speech given by Sister Nicola Coyle’s (later known as Mistress Coyle). She gave this speech to her unit of The Answer (a Spackle War stealth bombing unit composed entirely of women) on the 16th night of the 8th month, year 6. The next day, Coyle’s unit would launch an extremely successful attack on a nearby Spackle camp, crippling the Spackle population. The surviving Spackle of this particular attack were later captured and enslaved. Several weeks after this attack, the Spackle population fled, and the war was ended._


End file.
